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Archive for March 2013

Amazingly, the Achievement S-Curve matches up well with the traditional Bracketology projections out there such as the one at ESPN. The only current differences between my ASC and ESPN’s Bracketology occur at the very end of the bracket. All of Lunardi’s tournament teams are at least in my first 6 teams out of the bracket and all of my tournament teams are at least in his first 4 out. Except one.

All year, the biggest discrepancy between the Achievement S-Curve and traditional s-curves has been Iowa. Until recently, they weren’t even among those considered for the bracket. They have now snuck their way not into the First Four Out or the Next Four Out, but as the Ninth Team Out and last team considered for ESPN’s bracket. Now, the Hawkeyes are no perfect team, and what I love about the NCAA Tournament as opposed to the BCS is that there are no real “snubs”. If you’re not one of the top 34 non-automatic qualifiers, you don’t have much of a gripe.

That said, we can still try to pick the 34 most deserving at-large teams and Iowa certainly appears to be in the heart of that discussion. The Hawkeyes are 19-11 against what I measure as the 10th toughest schedule in the country. However, teams that appear much more flawed are listed ahead of them. Let’s take a look at a few of the issues that are influencing this misperception. Continue reading »

The Southern Conference, once again, has been dominated by Davidson. The Wildcats haven’t been quite good enough to garner any at-large consideration, but the way they’ve run through the SoCon it shouldn’t matter. They have a 2 in 3 chance to head back to the NCAA Tournament. Should somebody stop them, it will have to be the College of Charleston, and they have a 20% chance to do so. Elon at 8% is the only other team with more than a prayer. Continue reading »

There is, however, a good chance that a team outside of the MVC’s top pair takes home the tournament title and accompanying ticket to the big dance. Northern Iowa, Illinois St, Indiana St., and Evansville combined have a nearly 20% chance to win the title, with each having a better than 3% chance. For Creighton and Wichita State, they still have plenty to play for. Right now, both teams are looking at a seed in the middle of the pack, and they want to do everything they can to move off the 8 and 9 seed lines. A couple wins in the conference tournament could shift them into the 5-7 seeds and greatly increase their chances of reaching the Sweet 16.

Sd

Team

Qtrs

Semis

Finals

Champ

1

Creighton

89.3

72.1

46.9

2

Wichita State

90.9

62.7

33.0

3

Northern Iowa

51.2

19.6

7.5

6

Illinois State

48.8

16.4

5.6

5

Indiana State

52.5

13.7

3.1

4

Evansville

47.5

10.4

3.1

9

Drake

54.2

6.7

2.4

0.4

8

Bradley

45.8

4.0

1.4

0.3

10

Southern Illinois

62.8

6.8

1.2

0.1

7

Missouri State

37.2

2.3

0.1

0.0

Next up: The Southern, MAAC, and Sun Belt conferences get under way Friday.

Earlier this season, I looked at those teams who could potentially shrink the at-large pool by getting upset in their conference tournament. These potential “Bid Stealers” are generally teams from mid-major conferences where they are the only viable at-large candidate. When they don’t win the conference tournament, that automatic bid is going to a team that otherwise would have no chance of going dancing and therefore they are stealing a bid from another at-large candidate.

As we enter Conference Tournament season, it’s time to refresh that look at this year’s potential Bid Stealers. My process for determining auto and at-large bids relies on a simulation of the remainder of the season followed by an application of my Achievement S-Curve to determine NCAA Tournament bids. My Achievement S-Curve (ASC) is based on what I think the criteria for selection should be, and is not trying to mimic the selection committee.

This is the second group of conference tournament I’ll take a look at. Earlier I looked at the Big South and Horizon tournaments.

The Atlantic Sun is mostly a two-team conference. Florida Gulf Coast ranks as the best team in the conference (#173 in my predictive rankings), but Mercer is close behind (#184) while grabbing the top seed and having the benefit of hosting the conference tournament. That is enough to make Mercer a better bet than the field here at 54%. FGCU is the only other team in double digits (23%), as far as their chances to go dancing. Continue reading »

First up among this year’s conference tournaments are the Big South and the Horizon as both leagues kicked off with their 1st Round games today.

The Big South is one of the weakest leagues in the country, and my predictive ratings rank just one team in the top 190 teams in the country: Charleston Southern at #164, making them the favorite in the Big South. With host Coastal Carolina and the next-strongest team UNC-Asheville both getting upset tonight, the only other team with a reasonable chance at unseating Charleston Southern is Gardner-Webb, clocking in at a 19% chance at snagging the Big South’s automatic bid (which will definitely increase after tonight’s upsets). Continue reading »

My predictions as well as KenPom and TeamRankings give the percentage chance of each team advancing to each round of every conference tournament. To grade each set of predictions, I’ll use the sum of squared error for each game winner. For example, let’s take Ken Pomeroy’s prediction of Charleston Southern in the Big South tournament:

Qtrs Semis Final Champ
1S Char Southern 100 77.2 50.5 31.6

So Charleston Southern has a 100% chance of reaching the quarterfinals (they have a bye), a 77% chance of reaching the Semifinals, 51% chance at making the final, and a 32% chance of grabbing the conference’s automatic bid. If Charleston Southern were to make the semifinals, for instance, KenPom’s prediction would receive (1 – .772)^2 “error points”, which comes out to .052. The fewer the error points, the better the predictions did. If, for instance, Longwood reaches the semis, KenPom’s ratings would suffer for their 2% prediction of that happening. That would give (1 – .020)^2, or .960 error points. In fact, Longwood did pull of the 1st Round upset and is just one game from reaching the semis.

It’s finally March and I see no reason why we need to wait for Selection Sunday to fill out some brackets when we have 31 perfectly good conference tournaments to predict. Let the Madness begin.